NASA astronauts Mike Hopkins and Victor Glover undertook a spacewalk to install a revolutionary piece of Oxfordshire-built technology on the International Space Station.
On Wednesday kit designed and made in the RAL Space clean rooms on the Harwell Campus near Didcot was installed on the space station and live streamed on Nasa TV.
This giant leap forward for research carried out in the Columbus module will allow astronauts and researchers to benefit from a dedicated link back to Earth at home broadband speeds. The new kit marked the UK’s first major industrial contribution to the spacecraft.
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David Kenyon, Managing Director at MDA UK based in Harwell, said: “We are extremely excited that ColKa is being brought into service. This system is our first flight system developed through MDA UK, and we now have equipment for another seven flight missions, including four lunar systems, under development in Harwell. ColKa will bring tremendous benefit to all our ESA astronauts, scientists and projects.”
The UK’s space sector is going from strength to strength, employing around 42,000 people and carrying out world-class science.
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